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The LDS Restorationist Movement, including the Mormon churches

Part 2: Who wrote the
Book of
Mormon?
Various viewpoints

Material copied from a forgery added to Mark 16:

Mormon 9:22-24 appears to be copied, almost word-for-word, from the "longer
ending" of the Gospel of Mark, found in many Bible translations as Mark 16:15-18.
However, the verses 9 to 20 appear to be a forgery:

A note in recent copies of the New International Version of
the Bible states: "The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient
witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20."

Most biblical translations contain a footnote indicating that the
verses were not written by the author of Mark.

Mohamed Ghounem & Abdur Rahman comment: "...approximately 100 early Armenian translations, as well as the two oldest
Georgian translations, also omitted the appendix." 9

"The longer ending...differs in vocabulary and style from the
rest of the Gospel, is absent from the best and earliest mss. now
available, and was absent from mss. in patristic times. It is most
likely a 2nd-cent. compendium of appearance stories based primarily on
Luke 24, with some influence from John 20." 10

If God carefully preserved the golden plates on which the Book of Mormon was
written, it seems most unlikely that they would contain a forgery that was not
in the original Gospel of Mark. More details.

Related essay on this web site:

Two books on the origin of the Book of Mormon:

These books reach totally different conclusions about the book's origins:

David
Persuitte, "Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon" (2nd Edition,
paperback)

Excerpt from an Amazon.com review:

"This impressive work, now in an expanded and revised second edition
incorporating new findings, presents new biographical information about
Smith and resolves many of the controversies concerning his character.
Through an extensive comparative analysis it posits as a probable conceptual
source for The Book of Mormon, a book written by New England minister
Ethan Smith entitled View of the Hebrew; or the Tribes of Israel in
America. The results of this research were presented together for the
first time ever in the first edition of this work and are instrumental in
shedding much new light on the path Joseph Smith took toward founding the
Church of the Latter-day Saints.'

"This is perhaps one of the best books on the Book of Mormon I have ever
read. Apart from being an absolute must on the shelves of every LDS
bookshelf, this collection of well-researched essays provides overwhelming
evidence that critics cannot honestly ignore or nit-pick against as they
have for years now.

Examples of what is discussed are as follows:

A brief analysis and discussion of the geography of 1 Nephi 16 and
17 in the Book of Mormon and the discoveries of plausible locations for
Nahom and Bountiful in the Ababian Peninsula that, on its own, disprove
that theory that Joseph Smith or anyone else from 1830 authored the Book
of Mormon.

How the Book of Mormon can plausibly be understood as an ancient
Mesoamerican text, with it fitting perfectly into the cultural milieu of
that age and locality.

The authentic Semitic nature of the text as a result of the strong
presence of chiasmus and other forms of Hebraic poetry that permeate the
text ...

I have only scratched the surface with this synopsis. This book is a
must-read for anyone, LDS or otherwise, to understand the evidence
supporting the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon volume.